When Does Fortnite Season 5 Start?

It's been a tense few weeks for Fortnite players. The game played host to a strange missile launch, a gnarly rift was torn in the sky, and now the developers at Epic Games are gearing up to begin Season 5 tonight. That's right, Worlds Collide not just in days, but in hours, and we've got the details on when Season 4 ends, when server downtimes begin, and finally when Season 5 will start and players can get back in the game.

When Does Fortnite Season 5 Begin?

The Fortnite crew has made sure that players were aware of when Season 4 was set to end end and when Season 5 of Fortnite was set to begin: the Fortnite Twitter account has been counting down to the event for days, and now the days have turned into hours.

Players jumping into Fortnite now will notice a bulletin toward the bottom of the main menu providing information when the latest update version 5.0 will release, an update that corresponds with the new season:

The game will still be playable until around 4 a.m. Eastern time here in the U.S., which is 3 a.m. Central, 2 a.m. Mountain, and 1 a.m. Pacific time. At that time, the game servers will go down, and the developers will begin the process of updating servers and implementing the new season changes.

Naturally, there's no guarantee made for just when the servers will come back online. However, past updates like the recent Season 4 update required several hours of downtime, so it's possible this time around that players may not be able to access the game for six to eight hours — until around noon Eastern time, perhaps. When the maintenance is done, players will finally be able to jump into Season 5 and start getting some answers regarding the giant crack in the sky.

Regardless of how long it takes after Season 4 ends and Season 5 begins, players can expect to be notified when the game goes live via Fortnite over on Twitter. For the biggest Fortnite news and guides, including coverage of the latest weekly item store update, keep it tuned right here to Shacknews.

Kevin Tucker is a core component of Shacknews' powerful guide development team. For questions, concerns, tips, or to share constructive criticism, he can be reached on Twitter @dukeofgnar or through e-mail at kevin.tucker@shacknews.com.